Unanswered Prayers
by Rynnalyn
Summary: Back at the Crossroads, all hell breaks loose


Name: Unanswered Prayers (1/?)

Pairing: None

Author: Rynnalyn

Summary: Back to the Crossroads

Characters: Sam, Dean, Lucifer (doesn't really fit the OMC category, does he?)

Rating: PG (13?)

Spoilers: All major plot points through season 3? I have no idea

Warnings: Character Death; Religious themes

Disclaimer: O! How Eric Kripke doth make the universe and stars! And Ah! How I fear I am destined to sit and watch it! (He owns, I don't, I make nothing. Trust me)

It played out in front of him in a way he would have never dreamed in his worst nightmares.

After months of research, Sam figured out how to break the Crossroad Demon's pact with Dean. He found the writings and teachings of Origen, a father of the Christian faith. Origen's concept of Apocatastasis held that all people could be protected and received by God's love, no matter what. Sam became convinced that this was the answer.

Sam knew God would not let him down.

At dawn on the day Dean's soul should have been taken, Sam acted. No simple sacrifice, Sam offered a holocaust and read aloud from Origen's writings, knowing that Dean would be released from the bindings and chains of the deal. And he was right.

What he didn't realize was that Origen's teachings were more specific than "love and peace" and were founded on Origen's research that Lucifer and all those who'd been banished from God's sight could be released into God's love and return to Heaven.

At the moment of Dean's release from the deal, Sam's own faith broke the chains that bound Lucifer to Hell. But Lucifer only made it to the earthly plane. All demons, lost spirits and stolen souls all made it back to the earthly plane. From there it was up to them to make changes and sacrifices to get into Heaven, for God's love could finally touch them. But most of them had no interest in that. They all finally had the run of the earthly plane, no one stronger than the other, no one higher on the food chain.

In an instant, Sam became overloaded with visions and emotion of truth, lies, past, present and futures never before known or seen: his father's desolation standing over Sam's lifeless body at the hands of a Shtriga; Dean's joy at his own wedding to a beautiful brunette; love for a younger sister never born; the aching loss of love when Lucifer fell. He then became bombarded with the damage, death and destruction this collection of hell would wreak on the Earth. It was completely overwhelming, and Sam was certain that his head would explode from the pain.

It was a lifetime in thirty seconds.

Lucifer imagined it was a gross understatement to think that feeling the sun for the first time in millennia was peaceful.

Standing under the sun while bargaining for souls had always been a nightmare. It's why Lucifer preferred to deal underground, and in the ether. Being banished from Heaven isn't just a displacement of time and place; it is a revocation of God's grace and love. Standing under the sky, knowing that God was watching, but never being able to actually feel God's presence, was the simplest and most effective torture ever created.

So to stand in the sunshine, and feel God's grace pour down upon the Earth, pour down on _him_, was sublime.

But in the way of beings who have seen the dawning of time, planets created and destroyed, and love won and lost, Lucifer knew that it wouldn't last. It couldn't.

You have to strive for God's grace. If you don't want it, actively go against it, and die? You go back to Hell. If everything had been released from Hell, nothing would hold Hell together when evil began returning there.

It was a sacrifice he was prepared to make. He needed to get back to Hell.

However, standing at the crossroads, with more evil surrounding him, ready to kill him? It wasn't going to be easy. He thought of two angels trying to get to the steps of a church in New Jersey and smiled. That would have been so much easier. If Lucifer was killed, he'd go to Heaven and the real war would begin.

It happened, as most things do, quicker than you can imagine, but burned into memory in slow motion.

Somehow in less than a minute, all souls, demons, angels and humans who ended standing up at the crossroads knew. Scant few understood why Lucifer needed to get back to Hell, but most didn't care anyway. They just wanted him dead.

It seemed all motion began at once. On the edges, a tall man held his head as though it would fall apart. In the center a tall, graceful, beautiful man and a shorter, intense and beautiful man took on the crowd. It looked like an episode of "World's Craziest Mobs." In a blur, the two men were dead and the crowd dispersed, most scattering away from others, hoping to get a head start on any hunters in the area.

In the middle of the overwhelming crowd, Dean handed Lucifer the Colt, and took on the mob, dying to make sure that Lucifer had enough time to commit suicide, putting him back into Hell.

Sam's prayers had always been that Dean not end up in Hell. "Please God,… please,… don't let him go to Hell for me,.. please."

Dean went to Heaven. Sam's prayers were answered.

end

Author's note: This is not the fic I wanted to write. Actually, the next part, Sam's story was the one I wanted to write, and I might actually do it if Sammy lets me freakin' write it. I've never written anything like this, so tell me what you think. Thanks. Ryn


End file.
